


we're dancing on the bones

by blackkat



Series: Horoscope Drabbles [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 19:49:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17250296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: There’s another beast-tree in the valley.





	we're dancing on the bones

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a post by Normal Horoscopes on Tumblr: 
> 
> Scorpio: Every once in a while people out in the borderlands come across strange trees. The bottom half resembles a knotted oak but as the tree grows it seems to form the shape of an animal clawing at the sky. No two are ever reported alike.

There’s another beast-tree in the valley.

Kakuzu can't quite tear his eyes from it, no matter how much he wants to look away. It’s a strange thing, eerie, awful in a way that even Kakuzu, with the darkness under his skin, finds entirely unsettling. He takes a careful step back, like that will save him, like the tree is a threat, but panicked flight seems foolish. There's no one close; the borderlands are practically deserted, with only a handful of scavengers like Kakuzu daring to brave the space between the populated lands and the wastes. There's no one Kakuzu would _want_ to call, either. He works alone, and one twisted tree, like an animal clawing at the sky in agony, isn't going to change that.

 Muttering a curse at himself, he takes a step forward, then another. The tree doesn’t move, and he’s a little annoyed that he’s expecting it to. Touching its bark brings no reaction, either, but also no way to tell why it’s here, the second one he’s seen in his lifetime. They're _rare_ and Kakuzu knows it all too well, so the odds of seeing two—

“I think you're the first person who’s ever tried to touch one of my trees,” a voice says, warm with amusement, and Kakuzu twitches hard, spinning around.

There's a man seated beneath another tree, just off the trail. His hair is long and dark, falling like a cloak around him, and he’s dressed like a beggar, clothes stained and tattered. What catches Kakuzu’s attention, though, are the markings on his face. Bold red lines, edging his eyes and tracing down his cheeks, and—

“Why,” Kakuzu demands, “do you have a _target_ in the middle of your forehead?”

The man blinks, like it’s not the obvious fucking question, and for a moment he looks taken aback. And then, all of a sudden, he _laughs_.

Entirely unimpressed, Kakuzu folds his arms over his chest and glares. “Keep giggling, asshole,” he says darkly. “I'm not the one telling people exactly where to aim to blow my brains out.”

Still laughing, the man raises his hands, rising to his feet. There's no sign of any bags with him, no gear, and he doesn’t even have _shoes_. Kakuzu’s been out in the borderlands for _years_ , and even he doesn’t dare cross the line without supplies and plenty of ammunition. The radiation made more than enough monsters out of the local animals to eat every idiot who wanders in here unprepared, and there are a lot of those.

“Forgive me,” the stranger says, polite in a way most people don’t bother to be. “You startled me. No one’s ever asked that before.”

“Yeah?” Kakuzu asks suspiciously. “Were they _blind_?”

The man smiles, and it’s a kind thing, gentle, warm, but it still makes something cold and tense slide into the pit of Kakuzu’s stomach. “Distracted,” he corrects softly, and offers Kakuzu a commiserating smile. “There are a lot of scared people who come through these parts. I'm Hashirama.”

Especially after they’ve seen a beast-tree, Kakuzu imagines. He casts a glance back at it, then at the stranger, and asks, “ _Your_ trees?”

Hashirama steps past him without care, like turning his back on a stranger isn't the last mistake a lot of people have ever made. “As much as a tree can be,” he says, and splays his fingers over the trunk, where it turns from knotted oak to smooth brown bark. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

That’s nowhere close to the word Kakuzu would have used, but there's a thread of something like fear curling down his spine, a lizard-brain instinct that says he’s about to get turned into a really unpleasant paste if he doesn’t turn and run. “ _Yours_ ,” he repeats anyway, because he’s never been great at self-preservation. “You…grew them?”

“Made them,” Hashirama corrects, and turns on him, still smiling.

This time, Kakuzu takes two steps back and doesn’t even bother to berate himself for it.

“You do people too?” he demands, harsh because he won't let himself be afraid.

Hashirama laughs, bright and amused, and takes two steps after Kakuzu, not letting him retreat. “When they deserve it,” he says, and that’s gentle too, gentle like the creep of time or the steady pressure of a mountain, an oak’s roots cracking stone. “But I do tend to leave those trees a little more out of the way.”

Fuck. _Fuck_. Kakuzu’s _definitely_ facing off against something he’s not prepared for. He takes another look at the twisted tree, and—he can see it now, even more clearly. There's a dog in that spray of branches, the rabid, half-mad, entirely deformed type who frequent the borderlands. It’s howling, clawing at the sky like it can’t get away. Kakuzu swallows hard, drops his gaze back to Hashirama, and says, “You take contracts?”

Hashirama laughs again, coming closer, and it’s only now that Kakuzu realizes his feet are absolutely silent on the ground. He isn't leaving any footprints, either. “I think you should handle that kind of thing yourself,” he says, but it’s more amused than chiding. He cocks his head, and that long, shiny hair slides over his shoulder. There are flowering vines woven into it.

(Or maybe, something whispers in the back of Kakuzu’s mind, unlooked for, they're _growing_ there.)

“You're certainly not like the others,” he says thoughtfully. “I think I like you.”

It feels, Kakuzu reflects, a little like making friends with an earthquake, or maybe a tsunami.

Before he can think to protest, though, Hashirama stops. His head comes up, and he turns like he’s hearing something very far away. All at once the humor and politeness and _humanity_ are gone from his face, and something wild and alien rises in its place, perfectly terrifying.

And then Hashirama is turning back to him, still wild, still something so _other_ Kakuzu can't quite wrap his brain around it. “I have to go,” he says, like Kakuzu demands an accounting of his movements. “May I give you something first?”

“What?” Kakuzu demands, but Hashirama apparently takes that as agreement. He catches Kakuzu’s wrist in callused fingers, bringing it up as he ducks his head, and the press of his lips against Kakuzu’s pulse-point is like cold fire. Gasping, Kakuzu jerks back, but Hashirama is already letting him go. As swift as a deer, he spins and then leaps forward, racing towards the west. Kakuzu turns just in time to see him, and for half an instant he could swear to everything in existence that he sees antlers, like a woodland crown.

Then Hashirama is gone entirely, and there's only the tingling heat spreading up Kakuzu’s arm to prove he was ever there at all.

Taking a ragged breath, Kakuzu glances down at his wrist, and isn't surprised at all to see a ring of red set into his skin, wrapped with a deep green. Within it is a mark, a straight line crossed by a bar, with two curved half-moons on either ends, one inside the other. Like antlers, almost.

Kakuzu rubs his thumb over the mark, trying to recapture the feeling of Hashirama’s lips against his skin, and wonders what the hell he’s managed to get himself into.


End file.
